the best day

this post is a bit out of order. it belongs before colorado, 9/17/06. but it occurred to me that i hadn't posted about my favorite day.

the best day.


tonya, p and his girl a, bill and i got up early one sunday and drove to the red, to a crag called long wall. There was a range of multi- and single-pitch routes, but I was most excited about a 5.5-5.7 trad line called Big Country. it was supposed to be one of the funnest easy trad lines in the red. everybody said so, and so did the guide books.

some sites list this as a three-pitch route; some just one, but however you label things, you have to go up two pitches to be on the ledge where the last pitch starts. that's where we are in the picture above.

i don't usually lead things first -- p does. plus i had never led multiple pitches before, and there were a lot of people following so I was nervous about it. (Would we all fit on the ledges? What if there were no anchors? Would I be able to lead this at all? Would it take too long to get everyone up?) also, bill and tonya were long-time tradders so i was afraid they would find it boring. bill initially suggested that while the rest of us started up big country, he and tonya go off and climb something else.

i didn't want to do my first multi-pitch line without tonya, so they didn't go -- and they ended up with us newbies all day. they didn't seem to mind, and i felt much safer. who knew what could have happened two pitches up without them? i sure didn't.

we don't have any pics of the first or second pitch -- the first is more of a scramble between trees (which i comically insisted on protecting with tricams and cams). the second pitch gets you from a small sunny buttress almost straight up to a thin ledge and then past it almost straight up to another thin ledge, from which you can walk to the base of several climbs, including (the third pitch of?) Big Country.

that second pitch was a little scary. there was not much protection and the climbing was thin. i ended up zigging and zagging a bit to find easy routes with protection, and p laughed at my rope line, but it worked. this is me when i finished the second pitch.


i was pretty happy, as you can see.

the last pitch was a low-angle slab -- pretty easy climbing but with long gaps between protection, and no clear direction to follow to the next horizontal crack. it wasn't even clear where the top-out was -- there was an entire ridge above me. i aimed for a vertical crack which started just below the ridge. turns out this path is the 5.7 variant of Big Country, but the climbing never did get very difficult. fine with me.

from the top there was a god's eye view of a deep green section of the gorge, which carved a path to our right, and a cliff line on our left. there were huecos and perhaps even arches through the cliff face, and so much foliage on the cliff it was difficult to see clearly. A thought she saw a tent on a big ledge there. did she? the tent became a sort of legend of our trip. i saw the round shape myself, but i'm still not sure: was somebody sleeping way up there?

and as my dad always says, if not, why not?

i could have stayed there all day with the wind on my face. it really was the best day. so far, anyway.